Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Adventure Comics #517 - SPOILERS

Boy, howdy!
I just sort of come here and read what everybody's thinking so I don't have to.
Mostly because some of you think way deeper than I can.
Probably deeper than Levitz can, too.

Maybe it somehow explains Cham's eyebrows eventually going all weird, too. Really, the whole issue is just a seething cauldron of psychological... uh, something.

Re. Frozen Asteroid

Brin was completely innocent. He had no idea what was happening to him.

Imra was not an innocent party, IMO. The way I see it, this was her first experiment in virtual mind-sex without the other person's full knowledge or consent.

She never tries it again in original Legion continuity because the consequences were too dire, but similar experiments can be seen in later realities -- post-0 Hour in the 20th century arc (comatose Cos) and "Legion Lost" (posing as Ultra Boys's wife for "the good of the Legion"), and threeboot in the Shooter run (UB insisted "nothing happened" in the pantry but something *did* happen in Imra's head.) In each and every one of these instances, the guy wasn't fully cognizant of how she was using him -- and sometimes not aware at all. It has become a cross-continuity pattern of behavior for the character that earned her the title "Shameless Hussy" long before Adventure #517.

EDIT: I'm not implying she manipulated Cos into bed in Adv #517. Though they were obviously too drunk to make responsible choices, it was mutually consensual by letter of the law -- until the mindwipe. Nevertheless, the sexual content of the scene reinforces the "hussy" stereotype yet again, whether or not is was Levitz's intention.

Hey, that's my version of the old story and I'm sticking to it.

P.S. Overthinking, yes. Deep thinking, hardly.

It takes two to tango. Saturn Girl believed this episode with Cosmic Boy could ruin the Legion. She removed any memory of the episode, and hence any guilty feelings of it from Rokk. She accepted the responsibility and the burden of the incident totally on her own, and made it so Rokk wouldn't have to. That is how she protected him.

I'm not saying the mindwipe was right or wrong, I'm not saying it wouldn't have repercussions down the line. I'm saying this is my interpretation of Saturn Girl's motivation for her actions.

Wow, I'm going to have to dig out my old comics. I remember that *completely* differently. No virtual mind-sex at all, just two people sharing a hug that didn't seem particularly innocent, but didn't get to first base...

In that one, I see Imra as the one who recognized that even if 'nothing had happened, yet,' that it was *going* to happen, and therefore counted as cheating.

Ultra Boy, defining 'cheating' as involving having sex, felt that it hadn't actually happened, because he never got his pants off before they were caught.

At least, that's the impression I got, not that she had virtual mind-sex with him!

I'll admit that Shooter could have written this whole scene better. Later he's got Jo complaining about how it messed up his friendship with 'best friend' Garth, despite the fact that he and Garth had never been established as friends at all, let alone 'best friends' (indeed, hadn't even spoken to each other, that I can remember), and even been on opposite sides of the Brainy vs. Cos leadership squabble...

I'm not the hugest fan of Imra. But if the writing of this scene is being used to justify the idea that she consistently mentally violates unsuspecting men and then erases the evidence to cover her iron butt, then there needs to be some sort of moratorium on scenes involving Imra, men and sex.

At least until we're all dead, and a new generation can see her as a hero, and not a serial rapist.

I was gonna post the same thing.
Your heads are gonna explode trying to figure out something that just isn't that important.

My head muscle only gets stronger the more I use it, so I'm good.

Everything matters if you think on it long enough, and overthinking it is half the fun of being a LSH fan in my experience.

For instance, I can't even call out Tromium on her completely off-panel speculation that Imra mindzapped T-Wolf into have an ice asteroid affair, because doing so would give her reason to call out my theory on Ayla, Brin and the Too Two Girls lounge.

Long Live the Legion and its one of a kind fans!

That's honestly the way I saw it too. This is the ONE TIME I think Imra was innocent of any wrong doing.

[snip]

In the future, my weirder excursions into the soapiest of soap opera overtones and/or subtexts in popular fiction will all be pinned on-- er, I mean, credited to MLLASH!

[ponders]

Quote

Cos at this point strikes me as one of those boys who rolled 12 in Charisma and can get any girl they want. They ooze of self-confidence and teachers appoint them to be leaders. You hear talk that they are getting a lot, but you can't tell how much is reality and how much is rumor.

This has been my personal experience with leader types when they are young, as a young person.

Imra's led the team, too, of course.

These are interesting points, but I'll have to think about 'em some more...

Just to clarify...
The "R" word is off the table. That's much too serious a topic to bring into this discussion.

Also
I've been careful not to use words like "forced", "coerced" or "violated". Manipulated, yes. most certainly.
I didn't accuse Saturn Girl of being a "ho" or a nymphomaniac -- though her recent oversexualized characterizations have moved her in that direction.
I didn't accuse her of malicious intent to harm people. I accuse her of being a basket case with a damaged moral compass.

The most revelatory scene is *not* in the Frozen Asteroid issue, it's sometime later in the GDS, where a very nervous Imra takes Brin aside and says they must talk about what happened between them. Friendly hugs usually don't call for whispered meetings. A moment later, she's told by a scowling Element Lad (he had her number, all right!) that Lightning Lad has collapsed. Apparently her husband didn't think it was just a friendly hug, either. It's wasn't *all* in Ayla's fevered imagination. The implication is there.

Imra never says "nothing happened" on the asteroid. She doesn't once defend herself; we didn't hear her side of the story. When she enters LL's mind to calm him, she may have planted a mental "forget it ever happened." because after he wakes up, it's like all their troubles magically disappear. Sounds familiar, huh?

Even if you think the theory is goofy, you must admit the Asteroid Incident notoriously inspired later tales where something *did* in fact happen. Other writers seemed to perceive it as I do, including DNA and Shooter.

(For lack of time, I'll defer discussion of Imra's threeboot escapade in the pantry for a "Many Crimes of Saturn Girl" thread, but I stand by my interpretation of *that* incident even more strongly than the asteroid thing.)

I second and third the call for a "moratorium" on sexual content involving Saturn Girl, but it's probably too little, too late. However hard Levitz tries in the next few issues to elicit sympathy and understanding for her actions, it's going to fall on a lot of deaf ears (and blind eyes.)

If I seem too fixated on the subject, it's because whither Saturn Girl goeth, there goeth the Legion.

I think Imra did deny anything happened on the asteroid to Ayla just before she left the Legion. But I think she later said something to Brin about being unable to reassure Ayla there was nothing between them when she wasn't so sure herself and Brin looked shocked when she said it.

Indeed, she's been considered to not just be the Legion's moral compass, but, more recently, to have been *Superman's* moral compass, as the living embodiment of 'truth.' (Then again, the thought that Rokk embodies the 'American way' is laughable enough that perhaps this should just serve as an example of the crazy crap writers think up.)

As I've mentioned above, I'm not even a big fan of Imra, and think that the Founders + Brainy are way, way overexposed, but this scene makes Imra look crappy out of the box, and has the potential to make her look *incredibly* bad if it 'gets outed' 10 years later, as well as having the potential to make Rokk look very bad (if he's spent 10 years catting it up, while having vague memories of possibly taking advantage of some woman whose name he doesn't even remember during his drunken teen years) and make Garth look even more like a jerk than he did in Lo3W, if he finds out about this and goes ballistic (which, given his current 'hothead' personality, seems all-but guaranteed).

This isn't the '90s. Deconstruction is so over. Can we just have an exciting story in which more or less admirable people do more or less heroic things, and less of this 'let's drag them through the mud!'

I could buy a storyline where Imra gets a Jean Grey-esque treatment, psychically affected by the death of her homeworld, her mind having attempted desperately to 'save' as many as she could, by absorbing them into her own skull, driving her crazy as she's got 10,000 people screaming in her head. But Imra isn't getting Jeaned (not her fault, Parallax did it!). She isn't even getting Wandaed (wimmin can't handle power, Deus Ex Maximoff). She's getting Starfoxed (creepywrongbad abuse of powers in sexual situations, see also, Atmos).

Sounds like she tried to mindwipe herself too! :

Poor Brin! His mind gets wiped more often than his butt!

Good one, EDE.

After reading the issue, I think the art sucked, and I wish Kevin Sharpe would be given a lower-profile assignment until he learns how to draw faces. However, I still have no real problem with the story. I don't think we need to view the adult Imra any differently just because we now know she committed some youthful indiscretions. No one deserves to be held permanently responsible for everything they did as a teenager -- if we applied that standard to ourselves, we would all be in trouble. And I certainly don't think the story presents Imra's actions, either the sex or the mindwipe, in a positive light.

This was not Levitz's best story, but I thought it was a fine story, the artwork notwithstanding.

Perhaps he's finally going to discover, after all of these years, that he always really was a killer robot created by Dr. Londo, and that the Legion just re-programmed him to think he was a person, to turn him to the side of good!

And then *he* can be the one that was 'made from Red Tornado...'

Ya know what's funny...I thought of the Brin/Imra thing on a lark. Did not actually overthink it at all, just thought it could be used in conjunction with that developement. Maybe cause I look for things for my fanfic, some pieces seem to fit into ideas better than others...like my Mekt revelation in my fanfic.

I seem to remember an old post or thread along the lines of "What if the Legion had been a Marvel comic?" which had things like Brin really being an android and Jo really being a reformed crook. This may have been back on the old DCMBs...

Pretty much, and well put.

The problem is that Levitz says they're adults.

What Imra did, when she mindwiped Rokk without his knowledge and permission, has to be against UP laws.
That's why Titanians have to wear the Saturn symbol on their clothes for everyone to see and beware of.
She may not get caught, but the consequences are long term because she's considered an adult, not a child in this reality.

My youngest son got in trouble when he was 17 and the consequences have followed him his entire life, since he was plead out on an adult charge.

Dum de dum.

He didn't say they were adults, he said they weren't children. It's like that song, "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman."

But how about 'Girls just want to have fun!'?

And
If the UP says they're adults at 14, which historically they have and it's being continued in this series, and they're being treated like adults by the writer, the consequences for their actions hold them to adult consequences, 'across the wide spectrum of life'.
As an adult, I think that's kind of rubbish, but it's the Legion.
I just don't think it translates well into our reality anymore.
I'm forming the opinion that we need to go with the adult Legion and Academy that we should have now and forget trying to make the past make sense.
Because it doesn't.

I kinda like the idea of Jo having been in a gang as a youth, and having 'gotten out of that life,' only to have storylines crop up potentially from old 'friends' getting in trouble or similarly trying to get out of that situation.

And, total fanon, but since Marla Latham was shown wearing the same shirt, back in the day, it might be interesting to tie them together, and have Marla be the ex-gang-member that helped Jo get out of that life...